Computer and computer software users have become accustomed to generating, editing, receiving and sending many types of content items, for example, documents of different types, photographs, images, electronic mail items, calendaring items, notes items, and the like. In a typical electronic mail setting, a user often attaches a document or other content item (hereafter referred to as “attachment” or “content item”) to an electronic mail item he/she then sends to a receiving user for review or editing. The receiving user then typically downloads the received attachment to his/her local computing device or to an enterprise (local or remote) storage repository, for example, a company or school file server or a remote server at which the receiving user has a storage location or at a collaborative file storage location at which the sending user and the receiving user store content items for receiving and editing as part of a collaborative work group of any of a number of types.
If the receiving user edits the attachment, he/she typically saves the edited attachment content item to the storage location (described above). When the receiving user then desires to reply back to the sending user with the edited attachment or desires to send the edited attachment to other users or desires to add the edited attachment to a calendar entry, task entry, notes entry, meeting request, or the like, the receiving (and editing) user must locate the edited content item at the storage location and must attach the edited content item to the appropriate communication medium (e.g. email, text message, instant message, video conference, calendar entry, notes entry, task entry, meeting request, etc.). For example, the receiving user may then attach the edited content item to a reply email that may be sent back to the sending user for review.
Such a process is particularly problematic in a group setting where a group of users are working together in a collaborative workgroup and where each member of the group may need or desire to work on a single document in a co-authoring process. That is, such a receive, store, edit, store, retrieval, attach and disposition process is not only time consuming, memory consuming and process consuming, but may result in multiple copies of an edited content item being stored to a collaborative group's storage location, making co-authoring of a particular content item difficult.
It is with respect to these and other considerations that the present invention has been made.